Talk:Let's Duel Brothers
Wacky Syntax in Card Names I would say keep the off-sounding names of stuff when it's a pretty clear translation. The katakana says "Let's Duel," the hiragana says, "Brothers," so it seems like an easy enough conclusion to reach Let's Duel Brothers, at least before considering what to do about punctuation for added clarity. Japanese people often say "brothers" to signify unity of something--attitude, appearance, etc.--but Shobu and the other guy here are also literally brothers, so the spirit of the card name seems to be a unity of enthusiasm to duel by two blood brothers--each holds the attitude of "Let's Duel!," so considering they're both on the same wavelength, you can characterize them as Let's Duel Brothers because they both have a can-do attidude with regards to dueling. It isn't grammatically perfect, but "Go Duel Brothers" doesn't make complete grammatical sense either, so if you have to choose between two gramatically curious options, I'd vote for the literal translation which has that wonderful Japanese semi-English spirit to it that I'd say is a characteristic key to enjoying Duel Masters anyway, what with its overly dramatic naming conventions and hyper-inflated superfluity. I would also reference something like THE FINAL cards, which also don't really make sense grammatically, but we go with them (and countless others) because that's just how they wrote the source material, it's easy enough to gather the intent of the name, and in the end, it sounds just fine. Je2010 21:38, January 13, 2012 (UTC) * Its still a confusing issue, but another take on it can be "Let's Duel Brother" (Let Us Duel Brother). It a shame there's no ! at the end, or it would probably be the best sounding one. Yami Michael 02:45, January 14, 2012 (UTC) It shouldn't be this difficult to understand. There is no hiragana in the card name. Just katakana and Kanji, which the katakana above the Kanji tells you to read as Brothers. The cards name is just simply "Let's Duel Brothers". Not "Go Duel Brothers" and even "Let Us Duel Brothers", which those 2 do not make sense at all. -SSJ_Sonikku You're taking it too literaly. You don't even know if the "Retsu" is from the English word "Lets." It could be "Retsu" as in "Explosive." DM cards have a tendency to use Katakana for Kanji. "Go" implies the 'bang' of "explosive" (as in the two brothers are about to do something insane) and 'lets' (as in the two of them are about to kick some ass). The card itself is sending a message of "Lets Go, Duel Brothers!" "Go" is a pretty good translation because it makes sense in English. The card itself is cheering on Shobu and Katsuta. In any event, I think we should limit the name-changing to only a few members, like Yami, Blitzer, Ryoma, and a couple others, because everyone who wants to change a card's name thinks they know everything (except the ones who actually do understand what they're doing).☆ Brandnewkid 04:42, January 14, 2012 (UTC) *Right, I am arguing for a slight relaxation of localization standards, which I totally understand might be contrary to the desired style of translation for the wiki. I created this discussion page because it's a topic I thought might be worth discussing, especially after browsing the "THE FINAL" topic Yami Michael posted, which was fascinating to me because it was discussing what the standard of interpretation vs. literal what-the-card-says translation would be for this site. I had just that day come home from school where some Japanese students wrote papers employing titles of bands, songs, etc. and they used FULL CAPS for almost all instances of where simple quotation marks would do. This means it may just be a Japanese thing to use a certain writing convention because they simply don't think to use or are even aware of a western standard of style in communicating whatever it is they are writing--many students didn't even know what quotation marks were for since they use the square bracket system way more than quotes. I even asked a colleague why some students wrote the phrase "Original Smile" on their poster, and neither he nor the students knew exactly, they just wanted to use those attractive words. Businesses are in a similar position in that they will even employ language without convention because it's more about the aesthetics than the communication--the communication isn't the exclusive priority. With that in mind, I'm arguing to be open to maintaining a bit of that consequent Japanese aesthetic style when it wouldn't impede the understanding of communication. In this card's instance, I'd say it doesn't make comprehension difficult, so what's the harm in keeping the quirky workings of the language of a direct translation? I'm not saying this as a challenge or as a suggestion that the title be changed, but am offering as Yami Michael did the THE FINAL contemplation: a discussion of what the desired translation style should be. *Right, they use certain different character sets for even identical sounds, but since the "Retsu Dyueru" part is in katakana, that means it is not of Japanese origin, which then means we can begin considering that it's from English (the katakana--I mistakenly assumed it was hiragana in the original post, sorry--above the kanji phonetically spells out what I would assume is the intended meaning of the kanji, although its pronunciation isn't so). If it were supposed to be communicating Japanese words, I would think they would have used kanji (although, again, the hiragana would have been floating above the kanji to break it down for kids). I don't believe I've seen them use hiragana in the place of kanji, and definitely not katakana to communicate kanji (they'd use hiragana, right? This card is an interesting example of them using hiragana to coach kanji, but it's hiragana that phonetically replaces kanji, not that I've ever seen them replace kanji with hiragana). I of course haven't seen enough cards to make that previous statement definitively, though. But assuming they only use katakana as the Japanese do (for foreign loanwords) and hiragana (for explaining kanji or for text box sentence particles and other kanji-non-applicapable Japanese communication), that means the "Retsu Dyueru" can't mean "Explosive" or anything based on strictly Japanese words, they must be words based on non-Japanese words, right? The immediate deduction then is then "Let's Duel." :: I clicked the random page button to test my estimation that they are using standard Japanese writing convention. My random page was this: , which actually offers all three systems in one title. The heavier words get kanji with hiragana "sub"titles and the English loanwords get katakana. But there's no hiragana just floating around in the title--again, if the first two characters were to have been replaced with their phonetic breakdowns, they'd be in hiragana, not katakana, since their sounds aren't foreign to Japanese readers, and the katakana for instance isn't communicating the Japanese word "desu" for example, which means, like, "is/are/etc.," it's clearly approximating the English word "Death" since this is a killspell. So based on this random testing and my memories of the card titles I've seen so far on this site and in real life, the DM templating system seems to be standard Japanese convention: Kanji for complex words, katakana for foreign loanwords, and hiragana for subdividing strictly Japanese words (mainly kanji) or for communicating "functionality" words like "De," "Ku," "Kara," or "No"). But now with this card, it seems katakana will also be employed to communicate English equivalents of Kanji (but not breaking that kanji down phonetically, which is always hiragana's job)--kanji aren't pronounced "burazaa-zu," but that is an approximation of what the kanji seem to want to communicate: "brothers." : So that's where I'm coming from on this as a fan of the peculiar aesthetics of Japanese interlanguage communication. I am interested in seeing what people think about the translation style of the wiki: literal vs. localized. And afterwards, there's the consideration of the degree of localization the wiki wants to employ. This sort of stuff is fascinating to me as a student of languages. Thanks to Yami Michael's THE FINAL commentary which indicates I'm not alone in this interest in contemplating what the degree of loyalty to the source material is fair, necessary, flexible, and even, of course, excessive! : Je2010 15:58, January 14, 2012 (UTC) I guess that makes sense. Then just change the card name to "Let's Go, Duel Brothers!" Well we need more people to talk about these things for sure. -SSJ_Sonikku The card itself is cheering on Shobu and Katsuta, so "Go Duel Brothers" makes perfect sense in English. It should be left as that.☆ Brandnewkid 07:40, January 14, 2012 (UTC) If you put it that way, then it is fine. Most of the time I'm all for directly translating the name to what it really is. -SSJ_Sonikku While there's a lot to respond to and comment on (Trust me, I find a lot of this fascinating), I did want to leave an option that can help as a sort of compromise as well, without creating too many crazy redirects. The "Localization" or "Preferred" translation would be the card and page name, the "Literal" or "Phonetic" translation can be placed in the OCG Name area. *I think that is a really good idea and would solve this little dilemma. Have a Literal and Localization translation. Both sides would win and there would be no problems. -SSJ_Sonikku So in the case, it would show as "file:Japanflag.png Kanji: レッツ・デュエル兄弟 "Let's Duel Brother's", similar to how the "Official" Takaratomy cards such as Valkyrias Musashi, Ultimate Battle Dragon was handled. Je2010 was completely right in noting though, that they key factor needed is always consistency and of course after 10 years and multiple translations, there's going to be differing viewpoints. More later... Yami Michael 16:13, January 14, 2012 (UTC)